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Corn with Miso Butter and Bacon

After watching the entire first season of The Mind of a Chef on PBS over two days, I was inspired and ready to investigate a new ingredient. The first season of the show follows chef David Chang around all over the world and watches him eat, golf, and cook and hang out with some other talented chefs. Nice work if you can get it.

The new ingredient I was interested in because of this show is miso. Miso is a paste made by fermenting soy beans with salt and fungus. Sounds appetising, right? On the positive side, it’s high in protein and antioxidants, and actually has an interesting salty and tangy flavour. The most well known thing to do with miso is to make soup out of it, but that’s not happening here today. Instead, there’s this delicious (probably the most often used word in David Chang’s vocabulary) corn dish.

In a small bowl, combine the miso and the butter, and stir until the miso is incorporated into the butter. This may take more stirring than you think you’ll need, as the paste is thicker than the softened butter. Try very hard not to eat it all plain.

Chop the bacon into rough 1.5 inch pieces. In a large, high sided skillet over medium heat, fry the bacon until it’s crisp. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon, lower the heat, and in the remaining bacon fat, fry the scallions until they’re softened but not brown.

Add the corn, and cook, stirring and flipping, until the corn is cooked through, but still has some bite. Add in the miso butter and combine until the corn is glossy and coated with the butter mixture.